Since the inception of the use of paper money, central banks and governments have struggled to protect currencies from counterfeiting. Even so, perpetrators often exploit new technologies to duplicate the security features of legitimate currencies. As such, central banks and governments often struggle to stay one step ahead of counterfeiters. One technique for preventing counterfeiting, armed robbery, money laundering, extortion, terrorism, embezzlement, and other money related crimes relates to undermining the anonymity of cash. For instance, as discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,727,003, entitled “Decoding and Display Apparatus for Groups of Pulse Trains,” issued Apr. 10, 1973, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,812,296, entitled “Apparatus for Generating and Transmitting Digital Information,” issued May 21, 1974, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety, preventing fraud and other crime by undermining the anonymity of telephony has been highly successful in crime in Caller* ID® systems, which today significantly deter telephone related crime world-wide by removing the anonymity of the caller's telephone number.
Because counterfeiters often duplicate existing serial numbers, or use serial numbers out of range for the banknote's denomination, the anonymity of currency can be removed by effectively reading and authenticating the serial number. The serial number can be used to scientifically and positively determine the perpetrator's attempts to counterfeit currency, as perpetrators would have to invent new serial numbers to get around the system, a logically impracticable or difficult task. Nonetheless, existing systems cannot adequately perform such reading and authentication, leading to less than optimal counterfeit prevention. For example, counterfeiters sometimes create “Supernotes,” near perfect counterfeit bills printed, perhaps, by unfriendly countries and circulated outside of the United States. Creators of “Supernotes” have, from time to time, deliberately circulated “Supernotes” with small detectable imperfections to divert the attention of the authorities. Presently, existing systems are unable to detect these notes, leaving absolutely perfect “Supernotes” to circulate undetected.
Existing systems suffer from these and other problems.